第一段：
Few people realized how fragile a system this was, built as it was on so narrow a base. The totality of gold ever mined
in the whole world since the dawn of time was barely enough to fill a modest two-story town house. Moreover, new
supplies were neither stable nor predictable, coming as they did in fits and starts and only by sheer coincidence arriving
in sufficient quantities to meet the needs of the world economy. As a result, during periods when new gold finds were
lean, such as between the California and Australian gold rushes of the 1850s and the discoveries in South Africa in the
1890s, prices of commodities fell across the world.
很少有人认识到这种制度有多么脆弱，其基础多么不牢。有史以来，世界上开采出来的所有黄金加起来也只不过能填满一幢中等的两层小楼。而且，新的黄金产量既不稳定，也不可预测，时多时少，很少能正好满足经济的需要。结果是，当发现新的金矿时（例如19世纪50年代加州和澳大利亚的黄金潮和19世纪90年代南非发现黄金），世界的商品价格就会下跌。
第二段：
It was a message whose time had come and gone. Ten years before he delivered that speech, two gold prospectors in South Africa, while ou
Few people realized how fragile a system this was, built as it was on so narrow a base. The totality of gold ever mined
in the whole world since the dawn of time was barely enough to fill a modest two-story town house. Moreover, new
supplies were neither stable nor predictable, coming as they did in fits and starts and only by sheer coincidence arriving
in sufficient quantities to meet the needs of the world economy. As a result, during periods when new gold finds were
lean, such as between the California and Australian gold rushes of the 1850s and the discoveries in South Africa in the
1890s, prices of commodities fell across the world.
很少有人认识到这种制度有多么脆弱，其基础多么不牢。有史以来，世界上开采出来的所有黄金加起来也只不过能填满一幢中等的两层小楼。而且，新的黄金产量既不稳定，也不可预测，时多时少，很少能正好满足经济的需要。结果是，当发现新的金矿时（例如19世纪50年代加州和澳大利亚的黄金潮和19世纪90年代南非发现黄金），世界的商品价格就会下跌。
第二段：
It was a message whose time had come and gone. Ten years before he delivered that speech, two gold prospectors in South Africa, while ou